Welfare Video Offends Liberals and Conservatives

In a blog entry at Atlantic magazine, Ta-Nehisi Coates chastises documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi for her offensive welfare video, which he says manages to offend liberals and conservatives. He asks when it became avant-garde to punch people down.

Alexandra Pelosi goes to a welfare office in New York and proves that she can be as dickish to poor black people as she can to poor white people. Pelosi's commentary is worth listening to. She evidently is declining to understand the critique, preferring instead to undermine it by proving that her sneering knows no bounds. But cruelty is cruelty and the fact that one's condescension is of the rainbow doesn't make one any less condescending. 

Pelosi thinks she's surprising by her willingness to unleash her quick wit against poor black people. But there is nothing noteworthy about offending "both sides," a feat that can be managed simply relieving yourself on a crowded street. Moreover, very few black people who've spent time in the white world will be shocked to learn that liberals are just as capable as conservatives as regarding them as objects to be invoked at their leisure. 

That a person who would use journalism to render whole geographies as cartoons, would journey to friendlier environs and pull the same vapid trick should be expected. If your work doesn't actually acknowledge people as full human beings, there's no real reason -- short of naked racism -- why you wouldn't deploy the white toothless hoarder as a weapon, with the same zeal that you would deploy the black layabouts and drag-behind. 

Read Ta-Nehisi Coates' entire blog entry at the Atlantic.

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